Miss Emma Robertson

"To teach is to touch a life forever"

Month: December 2022

Final Networked Learning Post

December 7, 2022 / / 0 Comments

My Blog Posts:

For my learning project blog posts, I provided different websites and videos that are useful for learning the ukulele. I also included videos and websites that I did not find as useful, so people with similar learning styles as me will know which videos and websites that they may wish to avoid. When sharing these websites and videos, I included a small review of them, so readers knew what to expect if they chose to use the website.

For my other EDTC300 blog posts, I discussed my thoughts on different readings and videos that we looked at over the semester, and I hope that my contributions aided others’ learning. Specifically, I touched on Powtoon, so I hope that my peers were able to read that post and have a new online tool that they can use.

Here is the link to my blog post on Powtoon: Blog Post on Powtoon

Blog Post Comments:

Earlier on in the semester, I commented on Ava’s blog post about Powtoon. She struggled with exporting iPhone files (like photos and videos) into Powtoon. I told her that I have never found an online tool or website where iPhone file types were compatible. I gave her a tip that I do often, and this tip is accessing your camera roll through Snapchat memories and sending files through there as they typically send in a compatible file type. Also, I told her how I uploaded my Powtoon to help her avoid extra steps in the future. 

Here is a screenshot of my comment: 

While I did comment on a few other people’s blog posts, this was the main one where I gave helpful tips. I am not sure which other blog posts I commented on to find screenshots, but I know that they were mainly encouraging comments where I mentioned something that I liked in their post and wished them luck with their future posts.

Twitter: 

Here are screenshots of some of the tweets, retweets, and comments that I made throughout this semester that were beneficial or helpful to others, or that added to a conversation. I retweeted a few more things than what I have shared here, but I find these screenshots to be the highlights of my Twitter account. 

2022-09-17 (retweet)

2022-09-18 (comments)

2022-09-19 (retweets)

2022-09-21 (comment)

2022-09-25 (comment)

2022-09-28 (retweet)

2022-11-30 (tweet and retweet)

2022-12-07 (tweet, comments, and retweet)

With Twitter, I struggled to make contributions once my pre-internship started. I would have liked to prioritize it more, and I plan to continue using the app after this semester. At the beginning of the semester, I was making fairly regular comments and posts on Twitter; however, over the months of October and November, I typically only posted on Twitter when I made a blog post. As the semester ended, I tried to post a bit more and interact with others more on Twitter. It was definitely a learning curve, and probably the most difficult thing for me to maintain this semester!

Also, I never joined a #saskedchat, and I would have liked to. I ended up being busy on most Thursday nights, but I still have a goal to join in on one in the future.

Discord and Snapchat: 

I made no discord contributions. I meant to help a few times; however, I was always too late and someone else had already helped out. Often, I did not check my discord notifications until much later, so if I were to change something, I would check my notifications for the app more frequently. 

While I did not help out on discord, I was part of a Snapchat group chat with two of my peers for help in this class. This was a space where we could ask questions, and as a group, we met up on some Mondays to work on the course and motivate one another. This was very helpful. As I was part of this Snapchat group, and I had many friends in the class who I knew from previous classes, I never asked questions on Discord, either. 

Conclusion: 

That concludes my final networked learning post. I hope that I was able to help out a few others in EDTC300 with my contributions to the course as I know that my fellow peers helped me with my learning this semester.

That’s a Wrap on the Ukulele!

December 7, 2022 / / 1 Comment

Hello, everyone! Welcome to my wrap-up post on my learning project this semester.

Outline of my Learning Project: 

Week 1: An Exciting Journey (Learning to Play the Ukulele)!

This post outlines my goals for the semester, as well as my learning plan for the ukulele. 

Week 2: Don’t Fret It!

This post discusses learning how to properly hold the ukulele, as well as the app that I used to tune my ukulele. Also, it discusses the strings and frets of the ukulele. 

Week 3: Just Keep Strumming!

This is the first week that I learned a few chords, as well as some strum patterns. 

Week 4: Just Keep Strumming! (Part 2)

This week was a continuation of learning and practicing the skills from week 4. 

Week 5: Not Great Timing!

This post primarily discusses my hardships with trying to learn timing on the ukulele. This ended up being the hardest skill for me to try to learn!

Week 6: Picking Up a New Skill on the Ukulele

This post discusses my switch from learning how to strum to learning how to fingerpick. I was becoming a bit bored with strumming, so I wanted to try something new to spark some interest!

Week 7: Keeping Tabs on Tablature

This week I learned more about ukulele tablature. 

Week 8: Continuation of Strumming and Fingerpicking

This week I continued to use my knowledge of strumming and fingerpicking to learn a few new chords. 

Week 9: Learning How To Read Chords Sheet Music

This week’s post’s title is very self explanatory! For this post, I taught myself how to read chords sheet music. I thought it was going to be much more complex than it was!

I will admit that my learning did not sync up with these weeks perfectly, as I did run behind in the last few weeks of the semester. 

My Reflections:

Honestly, I really struggled with this learning project. I am rather disappointed with the result, but that is okay. Every path has a few bumps along the way. At the beginning of the semester, I had outlined a few goals, particularly that I wanted to be able to properly play a full popular song or a full complex Christmas song. I did not meet these goals in the way that I would have liked. In September, I loved picking up my ukulele and trying something new. Then, as the semester progressed, I lost more and more interest with the ukulele with every passing week. It felt like a chore. Reflecting back, I think that I tried to learn harder things than I should have at the beginning without fully covering the basics. For example, I learned the beginning of Stand By Me by Ben E. King before I learned nursery songs. I fell into a rut in the middle of the semester as I did not have the skills to continue progressing, and the thought of trying to move backwards and cover more basics did not cross my mind until the very end of the semester. While I initially imagined that I would learn a complex song by the end of the semester (I did not), I still learned two very simple songs, Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Itsy Bitsy Spider. Not quite the end result that I expected, but it is still a goal accomplished.

Overall, I struggled with the format of learning online and finding the resources for learning the ukulele; however, this struggle was beneficial because it helped my problem solving skills, and as a teacher, I have now had more practice with locating learning resources online. For an instrument, articles with diagrams and step-by-step YouTube videos were the most beneficial for me. There were a few apps that I would have liked to try, particularly Ukulele by Yousician, but this app only had limited free access and many of the lessons required a paid subscription. In the future, it would be nice to find a free app to follow along with the resources for learning nicely in one place.

While I am not sure when or if I will pick up the ukulele again, I am grateful for this learning project and everything it has taught me outside of the ukulele.

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